With the coronavirus lockdown, parents and carers are having to help their children learn remotely. Young people will also be turning to their parents, carers or guardians for career support.

This is a challenging time for parents, especially for those with children in their final year of school. The attached Careermag for Parents may be able to help.

It includes labour market information and qualification routes so teenagers can seek guidance from their parents to make well informed decisions on their futures. Parents have always been big influences on young people’s decisions. Given the current pandemic, they will play even more of a role on their teenagers’ options.

We are in regular contact with the Tour operator and are hopeful that the trip next year will continue to go ahead as planned.

The next instalment is currently due. However, given the current situation, we have decided to offer families the flexibility to delay this payment until September. Hopefully, by this time we will have a better understanding of what is happening.

We will keep you updated as and when we get any further information.

We understand that this is a difficult time for all of us so if you have any concerns or questions regarding the trip please don’t hesitate in contacting us.

I hope this finds you well and that the first Monday without school hasn’t been too stressful. I am not intending to provide daily updates from now on unless there is particular need, but there are a few points that have arisen today that I think are worth sharing:

Well done to those of you who have already established a routine for work; the sooner you do this, the easier it will be and the more productive and happy the coming weeks will be. As per my original letter (click here) our strong advice is that you try and follow a schedule as close to your normal school timetable as possible. So, for example, if you would have had English period 1 and Geography period 2, then start the morning with an hour of English followed by an hour of Geography. Of course, you’ll need to be flexible, but this should be a good starting point.

We are aware that Show My Homework has not always been accessible today. This is because of the huge volume of students across the country who have been trying to access it. We expect this will settle down fairly soon. If there is ever a time you cannot access the site and need work to do, our default advice would be to read a book for pleasure and/or use knowledge organisers for self-quizzing.

Please do not use the school remote desktop for accessing SMHW or Microsoft Teams. This puts too much pressure on the school systems. You are much better off accessing them via the internet directly.

Please bear in mind that it is very difficult for teachers to judge how long it will take you to complete tasks – because obviously this will vary from student to student. For those of you feeling a little overwhelmed by the amount of work on SMHW, please just do as much as you can in the time you’d normally have for lessons and do not worry if you can’t get it all done.

On the other hand, if you are getting through the work too quickly, you may find some ideas on the ‘Exceed and Excel’ section of the school website. As always, reading a good book is also an excellent use of time.

Unfortunately, it is not possible for students to come and collect exercise books in a way that we can manage without taking unnecessary risks. As per my original letter, please just keep work in a safe place such as a folder or on a USB pen drive.

On a slightly different note, it has been extremely disappointing to hear of students gathering together to socialise in the local area since school closed on Friday. We explained to all students last week why this is a deeply stupid thing to do in the current climate – aside from the risks of contracting Covid-19 yourself, you are being utterly irresponsible by potentially passing it on to others who may be far more vulnerable than you. To those parents concerned, I beg you to be more responsible and not let your children out and about: there really can be no excuse.

For those families of vulnerable children and/or keyworkers:

Thank you to those of you who managed to find alternatives to sending children into school, in line with government advice. There is no doubt that minimising the number of students in school is the best way to help reduce the numbers of people contracting the Covid virus and therefore ease the burden on the NHS. Equally, we remain open for those of you who really do need us. Please email StudentServices@lymmhigh.org.uk if anything changes as regards likely attendance compared to what you have already told us.

Students coming into school no longer need to wear uniform.

The Cat 5 bus from Partington is no longer running. Please contact us if this causes a major problem.

N.b. at the time of writing, we are waiting for the government’s daily press conference (scheduled for 8.30pm) and will be in touch again if anything changes as regards school opening for key workers.

Finally, I would like to thank parents and carers for all the support you have shown the school during this time. We have been overwhelmed by the number of you who have taken the time to get in touch and I want you to know that the staff really do appreciate it.

Year 12 students have attended an assembly today which outlined the expectations and support which are in place for students during the school closure. We were incredibly impressed with their response to this and we thank them for being so responsible and for taking such uncertain circumstances in their stride. Teachers will be setting students plenty of work and students are expected to get on with this independently. The following guidance should also be helpful (see link). We will be in touch with students regularly through email and we will do out utmost to support all students through this difficult period. We wish you and our families good health and we look forward to returning to some normality soon. Mrs Jennings